Wireless Local Area Networks (WLANs) have gained significant popularity and are widely deployed because of the flexibility and convenience in connectivity that they provide. WLANs enable connections to devices that are located within somewhat large geographical areas, such as the area covered by a building or a campus, for example. WLAN systems are based on IEEE 802.11 standard specifications, which typically operate within a 100-meter range, and are generally utilized to supplement the communication capacity provided by traditional wired Local Area Networks (LANs) installed in the same geographic area as the WLAN systems.
The introduction of networks based on the new IEEE 802.11n standard specifications promises to at least double the theoretical wireless bandwidth of today's 54 Mbit/s data rates supported by IEEE 802.11a/g networks, for example. In fact, networks based on the proposed IEEE 802.11n specifications may be able to offer up to 10 times the capacity offered by current WLAN systems.
Because of the increases in data rates supported by forthcoming WLAN systems, more demanding specifications may be required for the design of frequency synthesizers used in wireless terminals, such as mobile devices, for example, and/or in access points (APs) to generate the reference signals used for IEEE 802.11n operation. WLAN radios may also be integrated into a cellular phone. For such embedded application, a frequency synthesizer may need to be able to operate over a wide range of reference frequencies. At the same time, loop bandwidth may have to be sufficiently high to meet settling requirements when a WLAN radio is switched between receiving and transmitting operations.
Optimizing the design of a frequency synthesizer requires that both high bandwidth and low phase noise specifications are met simultaneously, a task that may generally be difficult to achieve. In this regard, fractional-N phase-locked-loop (PLL) frequency synthesizers may be utilized in wireless terminals to try to meet simultaneous fine resolution and high bandwidth. The fractional-N PLL frequency synthesizer enables dithering a divide value between integer values in order to produce a fractional divide value that is utilized in the frequency synthesizer's feedback loop. However, the dithering operation may generally introduce quantization noise into the frequency synthesizer, negatively impacting the overall phase noise performance. Moreover, as the bandwidth in the loop increases more quantization noise appears at the output. However, a higher bandwidth may better suppress the noise contributed by a voltage controlled oscillator (VCO). When trying to achieve a given noise specification, different noise sources inside the PLL may result in conflicting requirements on loop bandwidth. In this regard, performance optimization becomes an important aspect of the frequency synthesizer design. Furthermore, higher data rates may also require increased power usage, which may be limited and thus undesirable in wireless devices.
Further limitations and disadvantages of conventional and traditional approaches will become apparent to one of skill in the art, through comparison of such systems with some aspects of the present invention as set forth in the remainder of the present application with reference to the drawings.